In my younger days I used to keep my old college thermodynamics textbook on my nightstand. If I was ever having trouble falling asleep, I would pick a page at random and just start reading. Sleep was all but guaranteed within a few minutes of opening the book. Much safer than pills.
One of the concepts I remember from thermodynamics is the idea of state and path-dependent functions. Quantities that are either dependent or independent of the path you take from the initial to the final state. It was easy to understand how a path-independent state function might be useful for comparing results among various laboratories.
In mountain climbing, I suppose the difficulty of the path matters in addition to the total height of the summit. But what about art? Consider an abstract image like the one shown above. Does it matter that it was captured entirely in camera and only changed to black and white in software? What if the image were created entirely in Photoshop? Does the path change the impact on the viewer?
When I go to a museum show, I usually ignore all the didactic material at first. Later, I go back and read it if I am keen to know more.
